Michael Root

School

  • School of Theology and Religious Studies

    • Expertise

  • Ecumenical theology
  • Eschatology
  • Justification and Grace

    • Biography

    Michael Root is a native of Norfolk, Virginia. He studied at Dartmouth College (BA, summa cum laude) and Yale University (PhD. in theology). He has taught at Davidson College, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, and Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. For ten years, he was Research Professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France.

    Ecumenical dialogues have been at the center of Root’s service. He was on the drafting team for the Catholic-Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, and served on the Catholic-Lutheran dialogue both nationally and internationally, the international Lutheran-Anglican dialogue, and the US Lutheran-Methodist dialogue. He was a staff consultant to the 1993 World Conference on Faith and Order (Spain) and the 1998 Lambeth Conference (England). He has been the executive director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.

    Root is the author (With Gabriel Fackre) of Affirmations and Admonitions (1998) and editor of Justification by Faith (with Karl Lehmann and William Rusch, 1997), Baptism and the Unity of the Church (with Risto Saarinen, 1998), and, with James Buckley, Sharper than a Two-Edged Sword: Preaching, Teaching and Living the Bible (2008), The Morally Divided Body: Ethical Disagreement and the Divided Church (2012), and Christian Theology and Islam (2013). In addition, he is the author of many scholarly articles and an associate editor of the journal Pro Ecclesia.  He can remember when Eddie LeBaron was the Washington quarterback.

    Publications

    • Affirmations and Admonitions

      Affirmations and Admonitions

      Affirmations and Admonitions: Lutheran Decisions and Dialogue with Reformed, Episcopal, and Roman Catholic Churches

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    • Baptism and the Unity of the Church

      Baptism and the Unity of the Church

      Baptism and the Unity of the Church

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    • Sharper Than a Two-Edged Sword

      Sharper Than a Two-Edged Sword

      Sharper Than a Two-Edged Sword: Preaching, Teaching, and Living the Bible

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    • Justification by Faith

      Justification by Faith

      Justification by Faith: Do the Sixteenth Century Condemnations Still Apply?

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    • Communio Sanctorum

      Communio Sanctorum

      Communio Sanctorum: The Church as the Communion of Saints, by the Bilateral Working Group of the German National Bishops’ Conference and the Church Leadership of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany

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